Delray Beach Hall family built theater, sought to create a ‘little Venice’

One of the more colorful characters in southern Palm Beach County was Emmett Campbell Hall (1882-1956).

Georgia-born Hall was the son of Delray Beach’s third mayor, John W. Hall.

“Began writing at age 16, fiction, newspaper features, research and popular-science articles, with sufficient success to make living,” Hall wrote in a 1942 résumé.

He claimed to have written about 600 original stories, producing dozens of books and articles as well as scenarios and scripts in the early days of film.

He produced no fewer than 68 titles between 1910 and 1917 — a staggering one every 5½ weeks.

The films, all silent, had titles such as A Day of Havoc, the politically incorrect That Chink at Golden Gulch, and The House With Closed Shutters.

“Overworked, discontinued this line to engage in — Farming, Florida, 1918 to 1924,” he wrote.

The Halls had moved to Delray Beach in 1919 and bought 1,500 feet of waterway-to-ocean barrier island north of Atlantic Avenue.

“Don’t I wish I had that property now!” daughter Evelyn Hall Ogren — now 81 and living in Boynton Beach — laughed.

Father and son Hall envisioned a “little Venice.” The bust did them in.

But not before they’d built the Delray Theater, at Northeast Fifth Avenue near Atlantic. It opened Christmas Day 1923.

According to Dorothy Patterson, archivist for the Delray Beach Historical Society, the Spanish-style theater had a dance floor on the roof and the town’s first air conditioning: huge blowers and blocks of ice.

“The women frequently complained that they had stiff necks or sore joints as a result of sitting in the draft,” pioneer Lora Sinks Britt wrote in her 1984 memoir, My Gold Coast. “I always liked it. At least I was cool for a while on a hot summer night.”

The big studios elbowed out “indie” theaters, and the Halls lost their theater in 1938. It had various uses before it finally was razed in 1961.

Ogren was born in the Hall family home at 116 N.E. Sixth Ave., on Federal Highway just north of Atlantic Avenue. It was sold in 1941 to the Falcon family, which operated a pharmacy. The house later became the Falcon House restaurant, which still operates.

The Delray Theater, built in 1923, opened on Christmas Day that year. Emmett C. Hall was the owner. Before he came to Delray, he had been one of the earliest scenario writers in the brand-new field of motion pictures. The theater had a rooftop dance floor. It was built in a beautiful Spanish style, and this photo shows the large Art Deco-style marquee added later. (Photo courtesy of the Delray Beach Historical Society)

The theater just before it was razed in 1961 (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)

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